The Guardians (22 page)

Then, at el mercado, Gabo decided to get himself some huaraches. He put them on and left his good zapatos with the first pobre vato he ran across. They say everything fits a beggar. Anyway, right after that we had a stroke of luck. We met up with a traffic chota who finally gave us the right directions.

That day at the morgue, híjole, los muertos were out in the open like gruesome wares at a mercado—all waiting for someone to come and give them names. In some cases even faces. You can't put that scene in your head without asking for nightmares. I only hope to God I don't end like that. And it could happen to anybody. Cañones. Not just to los mojados perdidos. There were not only the skeletons we went to check out but all kinds of muertos, shot-up men, lil children, and the bodies of unidentified females. Gabo was describing everything to me. “They're not really blue or wax-looking, Abuelo Milton, but like something that was never even human.” I was smelling and touching por donde quiera since I couldn't really see nothing. It was like we were in a house of horrors. I'd seen plenty of dead during the war so I knew what Gabo was talking about. I reached out. Tiesos, all right, so stiff if you raised an arm it would probably have broken off at the joint. The coroner or whoever was in charge there kept saying, “Don't touch. Por favor.”

“How else am I supposed to identify anyone?” I asked.

Up at Regina's, we had all gotten tearful thinking about the skeleton of the mother with three fingers left. I was still shaken up from being at the morgue. I took out my flask with Jack Daniel's to cool me off on that hot night (since Lola passed I do have a traguito now and then), when suddenly me and el Mikey both spotted the darn mess up ahead. A checkpoint had been set up right on Main Street. My nieto, driving that conspicuous souped-up Mustang like he was Mario Andretti, downshifted quick. We automatically fell into the stalled line of muebles y trocas. Seeing all the chotas ahead, I took a fast swig and tucked the flask in the inside pocket of my chamarra. The deputies—six on one side of the road and six on the other—descended upon each vehicle as it pulled up. They had set themselves up right on the corner by the package liquors store.

“Oh, man, they're doing a license check,” el Mikey said. Los deputa-dos were waving mag lights, radioing in I.D.'s, and looking into people's trunks and backseats. They even had a bus—testing for sobriety or for detaining suspects, no sé.

Before I realized it, my grandson had put his ranfla in neutral and was climbing over the stick shift with those long legs of his to the passenger side, where I was sitting. “Ándale, Abuelo,” el Mikey said. “I don't got my license. Get in the driver's seat before they see us.” Even though that news came almost as a shock, my nieto being a teacher and all, what choice did I have but to hop over? He was about to squash me. Everything
happened so fast that I was in the driver's seat before I knew it. Just as I got behind the wheel, like an eighty-one-year-old geezer like me driving a red sports car was not about to attract any suspicion, a deputy was sticking his ugly bigotes in the rolled-down window. “How much have you gentlemen had to drink tonight?” He shined a flashlight in the car. I was afraid to open my mouth, which surely smelled of whiskey. I just stared at the deputy. His face was about an inch from mine. “None, sir.” Mikey smiled and, putting on the charm, got out his registration and insurance papers from the glove box. El deputy had asked for them and for my license. No sooner did we hand them over but the other deputies went scurrying off to run a check.

We were found clean, or at least I was, so the line of officers, men and women, waved us forward with their mag lights. Then, without meaning to, since the Mustang was a lot more revved up than my old troca ever was, when I stepped on the gas, we shot off like Batman and Robin.

“HEY! SLOW DOWN!
”one of the female officers shouted.

“STOP!
”another one warned.

Before we knew it, we had the chotas on our tail.
“OKAY, BOYS,
”they called on their speaker when we pulled over,
“STEP OUT OF THE CAR, PLEASE.
”

Mikey looked at me as if it had all been my fault.

I shot a look right back at him.

Then we both got out, me a lot slower than my grandson, obviously. The two chotas came over, walking like they do, like they're ready for a shoot-out. One, un chaparro with a big hat on that made him look like a thumbtack, started patting my khakis, moving his hand up toward my chest, where my flask was in my jacket. I was just starting to wonder how I was going to handle a night in jail at my age, when out of nowhere a humongous explosion rang out. It was so loud all four of us stepped back.
Ching …
/ It pretty damn near blew all our hats off.

“Holy … !” the Thumbtack cried out. “Holy … !” the other one said, too. Holy what I don't know. My near-deaf eardrums were vibrating. It sounded like an atomic bomb resounding all over kingdom come. You got to keep in mind they tested out the atomic bomb up in Nuevo México. Even ahora they test missiles up in White Sands. So thinking we were being bombed was not that far-fetched.

The police car radio went off, calling all its manpower. Down the street everyone started running around, getting in their muebles, taking off in every direction. Squad cars turned on sirens and sped toward the
direction of the explosion. All kinds of gente were suddenly out on the street—running out of the bar, the drunk and the not-yet-so-drunk. Others got out of their carros y trocas at the package liquors line to check out the flames in the distance. People screaming bloody murder, “Ahhh! Ahhh!” N'hombre. It was complete pandemonium.

Me and el Mikey were just left standing there with our hands still up.

Turned out it was the warehouse outside of town that blew up. It contained all kinds of petroleum products. The news said later they figured it was vandalism. Vandalism? Breaking the windows would have been vandalism. This was a pyromaniac's orgasmic dream. Or at least that's what my grandson called it.

Speeding back toward El Paso, el Mikey behind the wheel, I took a look pa’ 'trás. All I knew was that—híjole, hombre—once again smoke, gases, and blazes had overtaken the holy skies of Nuevo México.

REGINA

Gabo's sleepwalking was a challenge for my yierba know-how. I'd never had that problem presented to me before. A neighbor might come to me about a cold that wouldn't go away or maybe about suffering from gas all the time. But no one had ever complained about sleepwalking. I tried to treat it by giving him a cup of valeriana at night before he went to bed. Valeriana isn't tasty like manzanilla, which is soothing. It's a lot more fuerte. I thought if he was really knocked out he wouldn't get up sleepwalking. But I was wrong. I needed expert advice. A yerbero in Juárez recommended anís de estrellita. That tea didn't help much, neither.

My poor muchacho. He's been putting up with my teas all his life. When Gabo was a little baby and got colicky I gave him té de alhucema. Alhucema is a lavender tea. That was when he was only three months old. Mamá had just passed away and I didn't know who to ask about babies. But I knew something about the herbs I grew. When my sobrinito got a little older and he became chipil at night, I'd give him warm manzanilla tea in his bottle. Because of manzanilla I knew how to handle Gabito's earaches. You steep olive oil in the manzanilla flowers and apply it as eardrops. Chamomile works for big people, too, to calm our nerves. I don't like to drink it much myself. But it does make a good hair rinse.

While all the tesitos I tried on him would put Gabo to sleep right away, I'd still find him wandering around at night. One time he was in my truck. Good thing I'd started keeping the keys in my room. El médico offered to prescribe some sleeping pills or even some kind of antidepressant, but I said no. I was sure my nephew was not about to take any pills. Besides that, he was not crazy. Everybody knows that medication
is for locos. Locos and people with money who have too much time on their hands so they complain about being unhappy.

When Miguel found out I was giving Gabo teas for his sleepwalking he brought over some osha root in a small pouch. He got it up in Taos when he went and did a sweat, he said. “Gracias,” was all Gabo told him. Later, I found the amulet on the bureau in his room. “My faith in Cristo is enough,” my nephew told me.

“The concept of a savior takes hold of some people and that's what they live and breathe,” Miguel said later. We were sitting out on the portal that night. The bugs were behaving themselves. We were talking about Gabo and Miguel's ex, who had left him after she was saved by Jesus. “Well, looking back on it,” Miguel said, “I don't think Crucita wasn't regenerated so much by Jesus as she was by the preacher.”

“Lucky us,” I said, meaning me and him. “We're doomed to doubt everything.”

When I turned to look at Miguel his face was coming toward mine. Maybe my doom talk turned him on. I closed my eyes to let happen whatever was meant to happen. And sure enough, it happened. I got kissed. “You're not mad at me, are you?” Miguel asked afterward. My eyes were still closed. I wasn't mad. I was waiting for another kiss. I opened my eyes. I guess the spell broke because soon after that, he left.

That night I made myself a cup of inmortal. Inmortal is taken for a variety of ailments. One of them is for the enlarged heart of the aging. Sometimes I feel my heart is getting so big it'll burst through the chest cavity one day. And I cannot say if that would be a good thing or a bad one.

MIGUEL

As soon as they spot a red sports car, they're after you. Who has time to go to court to fight bogus speeding violations? All right, so I refuse to pay That's why I haven't been able to get my license back. Between my teaching job, commitments to the community, the kids, my research project, and now, all the investigations, I can't even think straight sometimes. I barely paid my electric bill on time last month. Okay. Bottom line. Who wants to turn over to the government any more money than we're already forced to? If it ain't coming out of your paycheck, they gouge you at tax time—they get you coming and going.

I call our search for Redhead's brother my investigations. What I've come up with is zilch. Rafa is only one among hundreds every year disappearing or finally turning up dead because of heat and dehydration in the desert or foul play at the hands of coyotes. These days all I can see in my mind's eye lately is that skeleton mother with three fingers that Gabe and my grandpa saw at the city morgue in J-Town.

“YOU A REGULAR
S
HERLOCK HOLMES, AIN'T YOU, MIKEY?
”My abuelo Milton sniped. He's got his own investigations going. One day my grandfather took me to meet the deputy woman who arrested the kid. “I got a hunch that they're selling drugs at the coyotes’ house,” I told her about the people who once called Regina.

“Why do you think that?” she asked me, eyeing me up and down like maybe
I
knew something I wasn't telling her instead of the other way around. That's the way it is with most cops. “It's a hunch, that's all,” I said.

“Well, we can't go in without a warrant,” the deputy woman said.
Nothing to do but walk softly and carry a big stick around here, I guess.

I tell Crucita all the time to be careful when she goes to el otro lado. I warn her to be wary of anyone who approaches her, whether it's a supposed traffic cop or even a girl saying she needs help and wants Crucita to go with her somewhere. “Don't trust no one,” I say, knowing all the while she talks to strangers all the time.

“I am there doing the work of the Lord,” she tells me. “I'll be all right.”

“Then, whatever you do, do not take the kids with you.” By law, one parent can't take a child out of the country without written permission from the other parent. I hate enforcing my joint custody parental rights, but I got to look out for the kids first and foremost, man.

While my ex is doing the Lord's work, I've gone back to researching my book on the “dirty wars.” The term
dirty war
goes back to the seventies, when the Mexican government started using brute force to stamp out both armed and peaceful opposition. It's pretty widely known now how much training and influence actually came from the U.S government to quash any and all kinds of so-called communist threats. From the student protests in Mexico City in the seventies to the Mayan people's uprisings with wooden guns in the nineties, the military has shown no tolerance regarding dissension.